It’s Fair Weather.

In Franklinton, the little town I grew up in, the Washington Parish Free Fair is held every year in the third week of October. Schools close for three days. People come in from out of town, and the population of the place doubles for a couple of nights. Kids ride ferris wheels and eat cotton candy and pet farm animals and show off their popsicle birdhouses that won a blue ribbon in the craft building. Teenagers eat pizza and tap dance on stage and walk around the midway holding hands and playing games to win teddy bears or posters of rock stars. Adults visit the Mile Branch Settlement, and have little biscuits and communion-size plastic cups of sassafrass tea, and watch performances on stage—sometimes a kid or grandkid singing, sometimes a big-name country star singing.

The first concert I really remember sitting through and paying attention to was The Charlie Daniels Band at the fair. I sat by my dad on one of the green wooden benches toward the back and ate orange sherbert ice cream on a cone and kicked my feet in the dirt around the tree roots by our bench. I remember the sound of the fiddle, and I remember Charlie Daniels stood close to the edge of the stage and yelled a lot and his face got red and sweaty under the bright white lights. I remember people clapping, and everybody around us sang along to “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” and if they didn’t know the words they just mumbled real loud. My chin was sticky from ice cream drips, and my tennis shoes and white socks were all dusty. It was cold enough that I had on a big jacket with sleeves that were too long, and I got to stay up past my bedtime.

Well, I haven’t made it to the fair most years since I’ve moved away, and that’s okay. In the times I have been back, I usually didn’t see as many people as I’d hoped. I didn’t have quite as much to say to the people I did see. And the crowds are a little less exciting now that I live in a crowd of a city every day. But I definitely miss the memories and my family—and the food—so I hope those of my family who will be in attendance will take a lap around the midway and eat an ice cream cone for me.